House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) plans to target six themes in his anti-poverty proposal on Thursday, including ways to address incarceration and education and to encourage employment, according to people familiar with the matter.

The proposals from Mr. Ryan, the Republican Party’s 2012 vice presidential candidate, could both set the agenda for GOP lawmakers going forward and give him a social-policy platform heading into the next race for the White House.

They could also create a new target for liberal groups, which have often argued that the Wisconsin Republican wants to cut benefits to the poor and elderly as a way of balancing the budget.

People familiar with the matter said Mr. Ryan’s plan wouldn’t grow or slash the deficit. Instead, it would expand spending in certain areas, such as work incentives, and cut spending in areas that he will argue are not benefiting the poor.

The speech will have six themes, according to people familiar with the matter, and the Wall Street Journal has learned five of the issues Mr. Ryan plans to target.

The proposals will focus on increasing opportunities for low-income households instead of highlighting ways to cut social welfare programs, said Bob Woodson, president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise who has spent more than a year visiting poor cities with Mr. Ryan.

“He’s coming up with a new construct and I’ve encouraged him,” Mr. Woodson said in an interview. “We cannot and should not generalize about poor people. There are the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. It used to be that way and it became politically incorrect. We are returning to some of the old values that served people very effectively until the welfare reforms of the 1960s.”

Here are five things to watch for in Mr. Ryan’s speech:

1.) Education. Republicans have made education reform a central plank of many of their anti-poverty proposals, pushing for more access to charter schools and vouchers that would allow students to attend private schools instead of failing public schools. Look for elements of education reform to be a part of Mr. Ryan’s push.

Mr. Ryan has said both proposals have merit. He will clarify his approach on Thursday.

3.) Regulation. Conservatives often say that excessive government regulation – at the federal, state, and local levels – prohibit low-income Americans from accessing better jobs and pay. Mr. Woodson said a component of Mr. Ryan’s speech would include making it easier for low-income workers to do things like hair braiding, for example, and other activities to earn income without government interference.

4.) Incarceration. Democrats and Republicans have in recent months begun debating whether there is a way to rewrite criminal laws to ease prison sentences for nonviolent offenders. The belief of some, including Sens. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.) is that imprisoning some low-income Americans and allowing their records to remain public, particularly young men convicted for drug-related crimes, could make it harder for them to one day re-enter society. Mr. Ryan will weigh in on this divisive issue, which is of keen interest to many low-income voters, in his speech.

5.) Consolidation. One common theme in many GOP proposals is that there are too many anti-poverty programs that are duplicative, overlap, or serve cross-purposes. Mr. Ryan will propose a pilot program that he will call an “opportunity” grant, which is meant to consolidate federal funding that goes toward food stamps and housing assistance, among other things, into a single credit. It couldn’t be learned whether this credit would go toward a single person or a single household, but it would essentially streamline some assistance to people through a central program.

Many Democrats have said that a similar design recently adopted in the United Kingdom as a “universal credit” got off to a rocky start, proving that such consolidation is too complex and unwieldy. But many conservatives have rallied around the idea, saying it eliminates unnecessary bureaucracy and delivers aid where it is needed most.

The sweep of Mr. Ryan’s ideas, and the reception to them from both conservatives and civic leaders, will determine whether these ideas survive beyond the summer news cycle and become a starting point for his possible presidential bid in 2016.

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